Playing With Fire (A Merle Dixon Story)

Chapter Six

Harlow

I peered carefully into the ditch on the side of the road, half expecting to see him lying there but it was empty. I crossed over it and started looking in the patches of trees closest to the road. Still, no signs of anyone. Well where the hell would he have gone then? I turned around, placing my hands on my hips. On the other side of the road were two abandoned looking farmhouses. They seemed kinda far for a guy who just lost half his blood to walk to, but it made sense he would try to get there. I headed towards the one closest.

I knew right away I had picked the right one. The moldy boards that had boarded up the outside of the house looked like they had just been torn off, lying scattered all over the sagging porch. I crept closer to the door and grasped the knob in my hand, turning it and slowly pushing the door open. The smell of mildew and rot hit my nose almost immediately. Ugh, it was disgusting. I really didn’t want to go any farther inside but I had already gotten this far. I stepped inside the house and shut the door tightly behind me.

The floor creaked underneath me as I walked into the living room, taking note of the sheet covered furniture and broken television set. I had a feeling he was here somewhere and when I poked my head into the kitchen my hunch was satisfied. All the cupboards and drawers were drawn open, as if someone had been desperately and very carelessly searching through them. I searched the rest of the kitchen, opening the pantry door and the closet door but finding nothing. I moved back into the living room to head upstairs.

That’s when I noticed a door right off the living room, closed but not closed all the way. I pressed my ear to the crack but couldn’t hear a thing. I took a breath and pulled it open, basking the tiny little bathroom in the dim light that was coming in through the living room windows. The first thing I noticed was the blood, the dark red stains that had pooled together in the sink and smeared the countertop and toilet. The mirror was broken into a thousand pieces and glass shards were everywhere. Then of course was the man half hidden behind a moth eaten shower curtain in the bath tub.

“Holy fucking shit.”

I crouched onto the ground, leaning over the side of the tub. He was pale and thin beads of sweat clung to his forehead. I could see his chest moving just barely underneath his dirty white shirt. He looked unconscious, but when I gently touched his arm his eyes fluttered open for a second and looked right at me. I held his gaze, noting the vacant expression in his eyes before they shut again. He was in bad shape. To the point where I didn’t even know if I could save him, but I had already decided I needed to try. I had come this far and sure as hell couldn’t walk away leaving a man in a bathtub to die.

“Okay, I’m going to try and help you.” I said quietly, not sure if he could even hear me. My fingers gently grasped the stump of his arm to see the skin was an angry looking red, yellow pus oozing from the wound. Infected. Badly.

I opened up the cabinet underneath the sink, hoping like hell I could find some sort of first aid kit. There was nothing, but I also had an entire house to look through. I stood back up, shrugging out of my jacket and tossing it to the floor before leaving the bathroom and taking the steps two at a time to the second floor. I found a second bathroom in between two bedrooms and charged inside, throwing open the cabinets and digging through the contents that had been left behind. Finally, buried in the back beneath a few raggedy bath towels was a dust covered first aid kit. I tucked it under my arm and headed back downstairs.

His eyes were still closed and if it hadn’t been for the constant up and down motion of his chest, I’d almost think he wasn’t alive. I knelt down next to the bathtub, setting the first aid kit on the closed toilet lid and pulling out a bottle of water from backpack. I reached down into the tub, gingerly lifting his forearm and poured a good portion of my water on the stump where his hand used to be. The infection was one of the worst I’d seen in a long time, which worried me. Cleaning it would help, but wouldn’t change the damage that had already been done. I dug a tiny bottle of antiseptic out of the first aid kit and glanced wearily at the man. This shit was going to burn and I had no idea how he would react. I squeezed a small drop onto the wound and rubbed it in. Normally, this probably would have any other person puke. Luckily for me, I had seen my fair share of carnage and didn’t mind.